The leader of Germany’s Green Party, Cem Ozdemir – who initiated the debate on the Armenian massacres in the Bundestag – told a newspaper he had been sent emails saying things like: “We will find you anywhere.”

He said well-informed friends in Turkey had told him to take the threats seriously.

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their people died in the atrocities of 1915, during the Ottoman Empire’s collapse in World War One. Turkey says the toll was much lower and rejects the term “genocide”.

Armenian genocide dispute

Image copyrightAFP

Image caption
Arguments have raged for decades about the Armenian deaths in 1915-16

Hundreds of thousands of Christian Armenians died in 1915 at the hands of the Ottoman Turks, whose empire was disintegrating

Many of the victims were civilians deported to barren desert regions where they died of starvation and thirst. Thousands also died in massacres

Armenia says up to 1.5 million people were killed. Turkey says the number of deaths was much smaller

Most non-Turkish scholars of the events regard them as genocide – as do more than 20 states including France, Germany and Russia, and some international bodies such as the European Parliament

Turkey rejects the term “genocide”, maintaining that many of the dead were killed in clashes during World War One, and that many ethnic Turks also suffered in the conflict